Internet

Access to the Internet is available to all NT schools. Internet access and usage is filtered through central content filters. By utilising content filtering across the NTSchools network, DEET is seeking to ensure that its students are not exposed to web sites that may be offensive, upsetting or inappropriate while at school. \

Systemic Content Filtering
At the systemic level, identified categories of web sites and services have been blocked. Currently, categories that have been blocked include: Anonymizers, "Anonymizing Utilities", Chat, "Criminal Skills", Drugs, Extreme, Gambling, Games, Hacking, "Hate Speech", Dating/Social, "Media Downloads", "Malicious Sites", "P2P/File Sharing", "Remote Access", Pornography, Spyware, Violence, Weapons, Profanity, "School Cheating Information", "Gruesome Content"

If specific sites that fall under these categories are needed for educational purposes, school staff can have these sites made available by completing the 'Addition to the Whitelist Request Form'.

Identified sites can then be added to the central 'whitelist', overriding the category blocking of that particular site. The sites then become available to schools within a day. Changes made on the central whitelist effect all web sites that are available to all schools connected to the NTSchools network.
Note: Any changes made at a school level can not override filtering rules implemented at this systemic level.

Internet Content Filtering Update (15/8/07)
We are just about to implement a new content filtering system that should allow us to apply selective filtering based on the user role (teacher student etc) but this may require users to re-enter their user id and password when they go to the Internet. The following links provide the proposed allowed and blocked categories and we welcome comment on which ones could be selectively allowed for different user groups.

Proposed Allowed Categories

Proposed Block Categories

We are also drafting a new policy that mandates that an approved filtering service is applied to any other Internet connection provided to DEET facilities that bypass the central filtering service provided on the NT schools network. These independent Internet connections have typically been used in preschools and homeland centres which are too small to justify the cost of a dedicated NT schools network service. The policy will also apply to school managed proxy servers that are providing access to the Internet via one of the school public IP addresses.

We appreciate that this will cause frustration for some but experience tells us that these measures are essential to protect the interests of students and staff.

top ....